Lose Weight - The 2 Minute Solution

This is not a dream.

The one way to lose weight consistently is to be in tune with your body. You can connect with your body by daydreaming for 2 minutes before you eat. Take that time to tune-in to your dreams and rediscover with the big picture of who you are.

Daydreaming helps you stay in touch with how you want to see yourself.

• It's body image power. 
• Allow yourself to visualize how you want to appear and how you want to feel.

Reconnect with simple daydreams and your self-esteem will change. You will  respect yourself differently.

• You'll discover a new found patience with who you are. 
• The result will be a new relaxed way of eating

Remember the art of leisurely dreaming when you were young, a time of innocence, of privately listening with your senses to the rush of your life. Noticing what you're looking at and smelling is normal. It’s still important to do this. Appetites are personal.

• Do this for 2 minutes before every meal and watch emotional habits and your body change.

Binging as a physical "solution" to emotional stress is like putting a band-aid on a  broken heart or rubbing butter on a burn.  It's a mountain of tension with nowhere to go.

• Allowing yourself to daydream relaxes tension. 
• Get ready to be surprised.

According to diet and nutrition experts, an apple a day can help fight being overweight.  Other experts publish lists of healthy snacks. Experts everywhere are telling you how to stop binging or start dropping pounds. Obviously, there are so many experts because there is no one answer.

• Daydream to relax and regain your perspective. 
• Then tune-in to your body.  
• You'll recognize what's right for you.

Your senses have always been the way of being in direct touch with your world. Listening to intuition is not daydreaming. It’s staying in touch with the present. That's where your appetite is.

Binging- Getting Intimate

Let's get personal and talk about intimate relationships. The most intimate relationship you have is with your own body. 

• You sleep with it every night, dress and feed it. 
• Your body gives you pleasure and physical power. 
• You wash it, touch yourself, use your body to get places and use it to be noticed.

Maybe you work out or maybe you hide your body with certain clothes. Everyone has an intimate relationship with their body. It's an emotional connection. 

Classic diets insist you focus on a plan and ignore physical messages from your body. 

• That's why people binge. 
• When you ignore what you feel physically, you stress out your body. 
• The result is an unhealthy emotional relationship with food. 

Binging happens because you lose your natural connection with physical satisfaction. It's the result of an emotional sense of confusion and isolation.

• When you binge, taste is not on your mind because you are thinking with your emotions, not responding to physical hunger.
• Binging is a desperate, very personal plea for comfort.

Your body is the power source of your mind, your heart and your soul. Pay attention to it. 

• Eating intuitively is a natural connection with satisfaction.
• Use dignity and courage to respect yourself.
• A healthy emotional connection is protective, not abusive.

Eating intuitively is relaxing when you eat, so you taste your food and notice how your body feels. Stay intimate with yourself. Stay connected with your body.

Get off of the diet dogma treadmill of emotional isolation and notice your intimate needs. You can use your senses to connect with your body.

• Stress around eating impacts every physical pleasure you might enjoy. 
• It's not good for intimacy in any part of your life.

Being intimate starts with respecting yourself. Honor yourself by forgiving binging and then, give yourself a chance to listen to your body.

• It's a skill you can re-learn.
• Enjoy your body; don't abuse it.

Make Love

Making love is not abusive or thoughtless.  Everybody wants love and lots of us eat to get it.

The truth is, no amount of food will satisfy emotional needs.

Be bold and imagine eating is making love to your body. In fact, when taste is the focus at mealtime, emotions that sabotage eating choices go away Try it. Nobody has to know about it. But, you will feel thrilled because you will be honestly relating to yourself when you eat.

Tuning-in to the taste and flavor of what you're eating, relaxes your whole body. It's a secret of good health and weight control. You digest food more efficiently and get a new perspective about why you're eating.  This keeps you in control.

• F stands for fulfill. Fulfill your physical needs by tasting what you put into your body. This will spare you the pain of overeating.
• O stands for occupy. Let eating occupy a place of pleasure in your life. Don't rush or force it. Pleasure is another word for relaxing. Tense eating makes you gain weight.
• O stands for overcoming old habits that disconnect you from your body. Habits are a sign of aging. Let go of what hasn't worked and taste your food instead.
• D stands for discovering your determination.  Do it. Make the taste connection with your body and respond to it.

Savor flavor.  Emotional eating is the result of losing this important connection with your body.
It's old news that food is Love. But it's still the truth. Share what you taste with others; savor the pleasure together. Stay young in your mind by connecting with your body.  Tune-in to the pleasure of being in sync with yourself.

The next time you eat, make the love connection with your body. Take control of how much you eat by tasting your food and be sure to have some fun.

Stop choking and lose weight!

"A man begins cutting his wisdom teeth the first time he bites off more than he can chew." Herb Caen

We are supposed to learn from experience. Biting off more than you can chew means gaining weight, choking or feeling bloated after you eat.

Wisdom is slimming because it lightens life's burdens. This means when you take control of  eating by noticing how much food you're putting in your mouth, you will lose weight. It's easy to be wise.

Common sense is intuitive. Don't bite off more than you can chew. Use taste to enjoy what you put in to your mouth. Talk about the pleasure of it. Pleasure of taste and texture is much sexier than calorie count for dinner conversation.

So what's stopping you? Old habits. Habits are like old age. They creep up and bend us out of shape and dull our minds. A habit that chokes is a monkey on your back. Shake it off.

The habit of focusing on negative thoughts about eating during mealtime will actually cause you to gain weight! Instead, eat sensually:

• Look at the colors on your plate. If they're not appetizing, don't eat it.
• Smell the food on your fork before it enters your mouth. Does the smell make your mouth water? Your mouth is the beginning of eating. 
• Talk more. Feed your emotions and your mind by being social at meal time. Time is all we have. Don't ignore opportunities to feed your soul as well as your body.

You will stop choking on your food and choking on your life by taking smaller bites and noticing what you're putting into your body. Losing weight is easy when you stop the diet habit and use common sense to be wise.

Bite off exactly what you can chew and focus on personal satisfaction. Don't let habits choke you! Be wise for yourself and lose weight.

You're too young to be a victim of habit. Plus, the victim mentality is so yesterday. 

You're never old enough to give up on yourself.

Comfort Food Time Capsule

Everyone knows food is a kind of love. You've heard about food that nurtures or about aphrodisiacs or even love potions. Eating is comforting because it nourishes us physically, emotionally and spiritually. Everyone has food imprints connected with memories that help us feel better.

When you eat to find comfort, you want to experience those memories again. That's what you're looking for. That's when enjoying comfort food makes sense.

Comfort food is a kind of intuitive time capsule. It's the experience of bringing a 'taste' of well-being or comfort back to you from the past so that you experience it again. 

Wanting comfort is intuitive.  Protecting yourself is too.

The trick of intuitive eating comfort food is to use intuitive tools  to think with all 6 senses to keep clear about your priorities. Then, please, eat and enjoy a refreshing time capsule experience. 

Here's how to safely enjoy the comfort in comfort food eating:

• Accept that you are going to have a comfort food.
• Commit to enjoying it by savoring the taste and how it makes you feel.
• Limit the size of your portion to the size of your fist.
• Smile after every bite, whether you want to or not. 
• Come back refreshed.  

 Sometimes your joy is the source of your smile, but sometimes your smile can be the source of your joy. ~ Thich Nhat Hanh

Stress Eating

Stress eating is chronic eating that doesn't make sense. It's a response we learn and unfortunately adopt as habit.  Don't gain weight because of stress eating.

• It's not fun.
• It doesn't feel good
• You don't like yourself when you do it.

Stress is a natural response to protect yourself from danger and makes sense. Natural stress has a clear beginning middle and end: You're threatened, you avoid the threat and the threat passes.

Chronic stress is a habit of the 21st century that keeps us out of touch with our genuine priorities. It's a physical out of sync feeling we identify as fear, anger, anxiety or general insecurity.  If you're chronically stressed, eating food will prolong your suffering because it won't release the stress. Chronic stress eating includes:

• Turning to the freezer for ice cream  - This makes problems worse. 
• Jamming food down your throat without tasting - This is totally unsatisfying.
• Eating a huge mound of food because it's available but not because you feel a physical hunger - This is is like shooting yourself in the foot.

When you're stressed, your whole body tightens up and hormones tell your body to hold on to fat cells just in case you're about to be attacked! By holding on to a habit of allowing chronic stress around eating, you are holding on to fat.

Chronic stress is physically released by sleep, sex, exercise and laughing. Music is also a way to release and relax your body. Tune in to music, feel your body relax and tune in to yourself.

Stress is the opposite of relaxing. Relaxing tells your body it's okay to lose weight!

Eating is supposed to be relaxing. When food is tasted and enjoyed, eating becomes a prelude to other pleasures. It opens the doors to zero calorie conversations, self-affirming eating choices and mutual excitement.  This is how to eat to nourish your whole self.

When you eat, enjoy a nice relaxed meal. You'll eat less, talk more, feel better and look your best. It's amazing how treating yourself with respect works like a vitamin!

• Eat for pleasure, 
• Eat because it feels and tastes good and
• Be happy and relaxed with yourself.

On April 16th, I will be talking about How to Break the Cycle of Stress Eating at 9:30am central time streaming on www.wqqx1490am.com.  The show with former East St. Louis, Illinois Mayor, Carl E. Officer is called "Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness", which is a good thought to focus on when you enjoy your next meal.

Discover Love.

Love is in the air. Can you recognize it? It feels like tenderness and passion at the same time. It's a combination of wanting and expecting and it's a signal to be good to yourself.

It's time to feed your soul by honoring your body. You honor your body when you respect it.  Notice what you sense with your eyes, ears, nose, mouth and heart.

"April showers bring May flowers." Everything you do has a result. The result of being good to yourself by honoring your body is: liking the way you look and feel. Flowers of satisfaction bloom when you're true to yourself.

Intuition is about satisfying yourself. Dieting is about denying yourself. When you satisfy yourself, you respect your body. When you deny yourself, you ignore your body. It's April - stop denying yourself and start respecting yourself.

Satisfaction connects with self-respect. You can't have one without the other.  Eat for satisfaction and discover love. 

Love, Respect and Satisfaction are all intuitive. Think with your senses, feel with your mind and be true to yourself. Eat and dance to the music in your soul. You will like the way you look and feel in the morning.

Here's Aretha Franklin singing R-E-S-P-E-C-T.